


Between the Lines

by Lindzzz



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Artist Newt, Credence find your chill, Credence sees evidence his crush likes him back and VIOLENTLY NOPES RIGHT THE FUCK OUT, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, Slightly Newt-Obsessed Credence, Tumblr Prompt, pining credence and implied pining newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8724562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindzzz/pseuds/Lindzzz
Summary: For the ask-sent headcanon of Newt being a good artist, and Credence finding that Newt's been sketching him."The open pages of one of Newt’s many notebooks are left on the table, and Credence’s eyes are instantly drawn to the dark, sweeping scratches over the paper."





	

Credence didn’t mean to get into what he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t mean to. 

But the open pages of one of Newt’s many notebooks are left on the table, and Credence’s eyes are instantly drawn to the dark, sweeping scratches over the paper. He moves in a trance, walking slowly over and hovering his fingertips over the sinuous lines of the occamy captured in loose, sketchy marks that come together to form the creature rising above it’s coils with wings spread. The eyes, somehow captured luminous in charcoal, staring back at Credence with the same intelligence that the real life counterpart has trained on him.

Credence has watched Newt sketch, it’s hard not to. The man will crouch and bend himself into uncomfortable looking configurations, creeping steadily, pencil clutched in his teeth, to his subject so the creature won’t notice him until he finds the apparent perfect stopping point. Red curls catching and holding the sunlight as his pale gaze jumps from the creature to the notepad clutched in his hand against one arm. 

At first, Credence thought magic would have been involved in the process. That Newt would wave his wand and send the pencil dancing across the paper, obeying his thoughts fast as lightning.

But Newt’s long fingers clutch the pencil like any other man’s. Charcoal gets smudged against his knuckles and wood shavings get caught in his loose shirt and he’ll bite his lip or smile in soft satisfaction at his own drawing, or in a wonder that never dies as he looks at one of his creatures.

Credence lets his fingers touch the paper, pulling a corner over carefully to show the next sketch. Gryphons are scattered over the page, caught in the act of twisting and prowling, stretching their wings and claws and twisting their heads around to focus on something unseen off the page. 

Every page shows a new creature, captured in black and white with Newt’s scrawling handwriting to the side noting variances in anatomy or distinguishing marks. It’s hard not to imagine how Newt’s fingers looked when they held the pencil as it made that swoop there, the dark point there, the bold shading here. The way they curled around this curve and gripped hard for a dark section, making the pencil dance with a different magic.

Thestrals are captured in sharp, graceful lines of black, The stretch of obsidian flesh over bone made into something hauntingly beautiful. Their wings spread and strain on the paper, the membranes run through with veins and bones. Credence is about to flip the page when everything but his heart stops in it’s tracks.

In the corner, captured as a silhouette, as if the sun was behind them, is him and a thestral. Even in shades of shadowed gray he sees his own hand bold against the sharp bones of the thestral’s skull, fingers each carefully defined in graceful arches. His profile bent down with forehead touched to the thestral’s forelock, his hair in solid black curls at his ears the darkest thing on the page.

It’s longer than it was then, when he was just starting to let it go. When he fought the urge to put it back into it’s sharp lines and he let it go free.

He flips the page, fingers shaking now.

Credence sees himself scattered between drawings of the creatures. In this one his eyes looking up, black as his hair, staring hard and wild. In another, his head is tilted down and to the side, looking at something below him and face captured in a soft, small smile, his lashes dark smudges and hair leaves caught in his hair.

He’s looking away from the viewer in another, with clean, long lines capturing the line of his throat sweeping up into his jawline. 

His face looks back at him here and there for nearly every page. His hair in different lengths until new sketches show it pulled back sharply. The way he wears it now. A balance of the freedom and the control. 

Some sketches show only hands. Holding a basket, curled around a wand, gripping a sleeved arm or gingerly petting a cerberus puppy.

Others focus on eyes. Looking down and away, glaring and roiling with shadows, smudged underneath with exhaustion and pain and soft and relaxed.

Credence gets to the last page before it’s nothing but clean paper. His eyes are captured again in penetratingly black charcoal, startlingly dark on the white paper as they look up defiantly from under tendrils of curls escaping from the tie holding most it back. 

His fingers of flesh and bone hover over the lines of his face, his heart pounding to escape his chest and a hot flare spreading through, burning him. 

He can see it. Newt’s fingers clutching the pencil and tracing these lines that are Credence, but not in any way that Credence would describe himself. He’s soft and relaxed or sharp and hard as flint from drawing to drawing. Something as variable and fluid as the animals. And Newt’s fingers brushed the page here to leave faint streaks of excess charcoal. His lips blew dust off this page after shading in Credence’s hair. 

His eyes had been on Credence.

Pale and inquisitive, darting between Credence and the page. Seeing something worth capturing on paper watching him move and studying him. 

Credence’s hand is shaking. The heat under his skin flaring hotter and hotter the more he pictures it. The more he wonders if Newt got that crooked, wondrous smile that lights his entire face up.

The book slams shut, Credence’s hand holding it there, his breath coming in harsh grating gasps. He’s seen something he isn’t supposed to, that shouldn’t be there. He can’t have seen it, can’t have imagined the way Newt would have watched him and the way his hands would have looked or the way his eyes would travel over the lines of Credence's face to capture them on the paper.

Before he can give in to the temptation to open again, to look again, Credence runs. He runs from the lines, from his own face traced again and again. He runs from what he can’t allow himself to think of.

**Author's Note:**

> Credence: *Is a bit obsessed*
> 
> Credence: *Sees that the obsession may be mutual*
> 
> Credence: NOOOOPPPE NOPE NOPE NOPE THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT BETTER SHOVE THAT RIGHT INTO THE DENIAL BIN WHERE IT BELONGS AND NOPE THE FUCK OUT


End file.
